Protocol 20 of the Stellar network has been launched and with it the Soroban smart contract language.
Developers at the Stellar Foundation on Tuesday announced the deployment of the new blockchain protocol update, called Protocol 20, which had been delayed due to security concerns that arose after a bug was detected in its code.
Although the Foundation developers clarified that the error was not serious, they heeded the call of the validators and the crypto community, postponing the update that was initially scheduled for the January 30.
However, after addressing concerns related to the security of the protocol, the Foundation confirmed the deployment and launch of Protocol 20, with which smart contracts have been activated on the main network.
On Tuesday, smart contracts were activated on the Stellar mainnet, ushering in a new era of technological development in this blockchain ecosystem.
A gradual rollout
Soroban smart contracts on the Stellar mainnet will be implemented in several phases, according to the Foundation. This is so that developers, validators and other participants in the Stellar ecosystem have enough time to “monitor the impact of smart contract functionality on the network and ensure performance, security and stability at every step.” , highlighted the Foundation.
Thus, this week, Phase 0 of Soroban began on the mainnet, which includes the implementation of the new programming language, the deployment of basic smart contracts, which will be subjected to stress tests, as well as several configuration updates in the main network.
This initial phase will last about a week and, in it, transactions are limited with the objective of guaranteeing security and stability.
Subsequently, the developers will deploy Phase 1, in which they will allow chain builders to implement smart contracts on the mainnet, in order to test the new functionalities of the blockchain network.
Security, scalability and efficiency
With the deployment of its new smart contract programming language, Stellar seeks to provide its developers and users with the necessary tools to build decentralized applications (DApps) that facilitate various aspects of real life.
Through Soroban, blockchain developers are focusing on providing a development environment that is secure, scalable and efficient, to build innovative financial services and applications that are optimized for the needs of today's world.
Stellar is a blockchain network with a decade of development. However, despite his extensive experience in the blockchain industry, he recognizes that smart contracts are not easy to write and that, for this reason, the arrival of smart contracts on the network took 2 years.
Soroban uses Rust and WASM, which are proven and well-known tools in the industry, in order to not have to start a new technology stack from scratch, but rather leverage the experience of existing tools, to ensure security, speed and reliability. familiarity. “We set out to build something anyone could build on, making the hurdle from idea to implementation shorter and more manageable so builders can build faster,” the Stellar Foundation said.
Although the deployment of Soroban smart contracts on Stellar is good news for the blockchain ecosystem, the price of XLM, the network's native cryptocurrency, has not reacted positively, showing a correction of almost 3% in the last few hours, at the time of writing this article.
According to data from CoinMarketCap, the price of XLM is $0,114 per unit.
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